Ari Fleischer, the former White House Press Secretary under President George W. Bush, saw the tweet and couldn’t help but suffer a painful flashback to the infamous speech his former boss gave on the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln during the Iraq War while wearing a flight suit with a huge banner proclaiming “Mission Accomplished” right behind him.

The image of President Bush appearing to declare victory in a war that in reality is still going on today in the remnants of the fight against ISIS became a political embarrassment for Bush that he never lived down.

Fleischer decided to give the latest militaristic Republican president a bit of friendly communications advice, given that the White House is operating with a diminished communications staff after the departure of Trump favorite Hope Hicks.

The former Press Secretary then proceeded to tell the entire backstory of the original circumstances behind Bush’s speech to set the record straight and show why President Trump should be more careful with his messaging.

After our advance crew boarded the ship in Hawaii days prior to Bush’s landing on the USS Abraham Lincoln, the Navy crew told us they were returning from the longest deployment of any ship in Naval history. They were proud of what they had done.

In his remarks, Bush stated the danger was not over and that difficult missions lay ahead, particularly in the Sunni triangle. The nuance of his remarks, however, couldn’t compete with the message of this banner.

It was the crew’s message from start to finish. It also was the backdrop for Bush’s speech. In May 2003, everyone thought the mission had been accomplished. The insurgency did not fully develop until the Fall of 2003. The WH press corps in May did not criticize the banner.

Like the banner, President Trump’s tweets will be seen in the rearview mirror of history as a symbol of what went wrong in America in 2018. Unlike the banner, the tweets will reflect on more than one miscalculation by the president and his administration. Like most Americans at this point, the only person we want to see proclaiming “Mission accomplished” is Special Counsel Robert Mueller.